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Notice that he says that this is the ruling of all the schools of Sharia. His words, “This is the verdict of all the Sunni ulema,” are for some reason left out of the MEMRI translation, but I have put them back in, as he did say them, and it is an important point. The death penalty for homosexuality is, in other words, not an “extremist” view held by those Muslims who aren’t really Muslims, who loom so large in the Western consciousness.

The Qur’an contains numerous condemnations of homosexual activity: “And [We had sent] Lot when he said to his people, ‘Do you commit such immorality as no one has preceded you with from among the worlds? Indeed, you approach men with desire, instead of women. Rather, you are a transgressing people.’…And We rained upon them a rain [of stones]. Then see how was the end of the criminals.” (Qur’an 7:80-84)

Muhammad specifies the punishment for this in a hadith: “The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said, ‘Whoever you find doing the action of the people of Loot, execute the one who does it and the one to whom it is done.’” (Sunan Abu Dawud 4462)

And so one Muslim cleric, Sheikh Khalid Yasin, concluded: “God is very straightforward about this — not we Muslims, not subjective, the Sharia is very clear about it, the punishment for homosexuality, bestiality or anything like that is death. We don’t make any excuses about that, it’s not our law — it’s the Koran.”

Notice that he says that this is the ruling of all the schools of Sharia. His words, “This is the verdict of all the Sunni ulema,” are for some reason left out of the MEMRI translation, but I have put them back in, as he did say them, and it is an important point. The death penalty for homosexuality is, in other words, not an “extremist” view held by those Muslims who aren’t really Muslims, who loom so large in the Western consciousness.

The Qur’an contains numerous condemnations of homosexual activity: “And [We had sent] Lot when he said to his people, ‘Do you commit such immorality as no one has preceded you with from among the worlds? Indeed, you approach men with desire, instead of women. Rather, you are a transgressing people.’…And We rained upon them a rain [of stones]. Then see how was the end of the criminals.” (Qur’an 7:80-84)

Muhammad specifies the punishment for this in a hadith: “The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said, ‘Whoever you find doing the action of the people of Loot, execute the one who does it and the one to whom it is done.’” (Sunan Abu Dawud 4462)

And so one Muslim cleric, Sheikh Khalid Yasin, concluded: “God is very straightforward about this — not we Muslims, not subjective, the Sharia is very clear about it, the punishment for homosexuality, bestiality or anything like that is death. We don’t make any excuses about that, it’s not our law — it’s the Koran.”

“Tunisian Imam: Homosexuals Should Be Executed – Thrown from a High Place, Then Stoned to Death,” MEMRI, April 29, 2016:

In a Friday sermon delivered at the Essalem Mosque in Sfax, Tunisia, on April 29, Sheikh Fathi Rebaï rejected calls for rights for homosexuals, saying that “cattle are more honorable” than them. Citing a hadith according to which both parties to a homosexual act should be executed, Sheikh Rebaï said that the only disagreement among Sunni scholars was over the method of execution, with the Hanafi school advocating throwing them down from a high place and then stoning them to death. Imam Rebaï’s comments stirred criticism in the Tunisian press and social media in recent days.

Following are excerpts

Sheikh Fathi Rebaï: I am very sad to hear many voices in the Islamic countries calling for homosexuality. These calls are based on the notion of freedom. These voices call for homosexuals to get their so-called “rights.” Who are they imitating by advocating for these rights? They are imitating Western societies, which have been corrupted by depravity, and immersed in the filth of depravity and the quagmire of sin and debauchery.

[…]

You imitate the foreigners and the non-Muslims in their perversions, their sins, and their debauchery. How I wish that we followed their example in their achievements, their precision, their professionalism, and their scientific, technological and industrial progress. If only we did that! But instead, we refrain from anything that would benefit us, and follow their example in everything that is harmful to us and threatens us. [Homosexuals] have managed to establish organizations and clubs that defend them, and demand representation for them in society and in public institutions. We have begun to hear voices calling for porn TV channels – as if we, as Islamic societies, do not have enough TV channels for whoredom, sins, and the spreading of depravity and abomination in society.

[…]

All types of abomination are haram,but [homosexuality] is the ugliest and most repulsive of all abominations. It is worse than adultery. My brothers, this crime does not merely run counter to natural human disposition, but to the natural disposition of the universe and even that of animals. Have you ever seen a male animal copulating with another male? Have you ever seen a female animal copulating with another female? [The Quran says]: “Do you think that most of them hear and understand? They are only like cattle – nay, even further astray from the path.” Cattle are more honorable, because they do not act contrary to their natural disposition, with which Allah created them.

The [homosexuals] are mentally ill, to say the least. Until the late 1990s, Europe considered homosexuality to be a mental illness, which required treatment by a doctor. But in the late 1990s – around 1997 or 1996 – it changed the classification and no longer considered it an illness. How come? Because many [European] leaders and politicians are homosexuals. They want to spread homosexuality and corruption in the Islamic countries, in order to destroy our countries even more – as if the alcoholism, drug abuse, and lottery are not enough.

[…]

Listen to this hadith, my brothers. The Prophet Muhammad said: “Whoever you find engaged in sodomy – kill both the man who does it and the man to whom it is done.” I will explain the hadith, so that I am not accused of belonging to ISIS, or of being a criminal, a terrorist, a takfirist, or a supporter of murder. This call to kill both the man who does it and the man to whom it is done is directed at the ruler who rules according to the shari’a. According to shari’a law, in the event of homosexual sex, both the man who does it and the man to whom it is done should die, if the latter has done it out of consent. The verdict for both is execution, because their sick souls cannot be cured. Their cure is execution. This is the verdict of all the Sunni ulema. The only disagreement among the ulema was about the method of execution. According to the Hanafi school, the ruler should give the order for the homosexual to be taken to a high place and thrown off from there, and then to be stoned to death.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — To be homosexual in Afghanistan is to live in fear. Naveed and Rameen, young gay men in the capital Kabul have lost count of the number of times they've been lured into dangerous situations on what they believed to be dates.

Both men describe being robbed, beaten up and blackmailed, and receiving death threats. They've even eluded police "honey traps" that could have seen them thrown in prison without charge, simply on suspicion of being gay.

They know they could be killed, with impunity, if they reveal their sexuality. Rameen, 31, tells the story of his friend, Zabi, who was killed by his family after coming out as gay, a so-called "honor killing" usually reserved for young women.

"He was shaming the family by being open about it. They stabbed him so many times," Rameen said. "It was a warning for us, for other gays. Now we keep to ourselves; we live a hidden life. And a hidden life is no life at all."

Both men use fake names among gay friends, and said none of their relatives or colleagues know the truth about their sexuality.

Meeting other gay men is difficult as there are no regular gathering places, and the need to be discreet means developing relationships is almost impossible, they said. As a result, most encounters are for casual sex, which can lead to treacherous terrain.

Naveed, 24, said he recently turned up at one of Kabul's major hotels to get together with a man he'd met in a doctor's waiting room who had asked for his phone number.

"He seemed nice, and he was quite handsome, so I thought: why not?" Naveed said.

"But it was a set up; he tried to kidnap me. He drove me to a place where a gang of men were waiting with guns — I'm sure they would have killed me, but I ran away."

In Afghanistan's conservative, religious society, sex outside marriage and same-sex sexual activity are illegal. "Pederasty," which is understood to refer to sodomy or sex between an adult man and a boy, is punishable by 5 to 20 years in prison, according to the Justice Ministry. The death sentence can be applied if the subject dies as a result of the act.

Pressure to conform can cause profound distress, and "creates a lot of psychological problems for the person themselves and their families," said Khalil Rahman Sarwary, a psychology lecturer at Kabul University.

"It is difficult for homosexuals to find partners, and if they do, both parties are afraid of being found out," Sarwary said.

"When the exact needs of a person are not being fulfilled, when a homosexual man is forced to marry and have children, it can lead to terrible unhappiness, divorce, even violence within the family. I know of cases where the frustration has built to the point where the man has even killed his wife."

Same-sex sexual activity is not unusual in Afghanistan's strictly segregated society. "Bacha bazi" is a culturally-sanctioned form of pedophilia, in which pre-teen boys — many from poor families, often sold into the practice — are sponsored by powerful and wealthy men to dress as girls and dance for parties of mostly middle-aged men. The boys usually live with their sponsors, who also abuse them for sex until they are in their teens, when they are discarded.

Yet the "bacha bad," as the sponsors are known, are rarely punished for the years of abuse they commit against the dancing boys, and it is not unusual to see older men in public with their young sex slaves.

The practice pre-dates Islam, and is believed to involve boys because of the general inaccessibility of girls.

While the boys themselves can carry the stigma of their dancing days throughout their lives, their sponsors, most of them married with children, are not regarded as homosexual, and their actions are often justified with the saying "women are for children, boys are for fun."

Openly proclaiming to be gay in Afghanistan, however, can carry severe consequences. The few gay Afghan men who dared to speak of their sexuality described a struggle of confusion and guilt as they grew up trying to cope with feelings they didn't understand. And once they did, not only could they not share them, they had to suppress them for their own safety.

Hamid Zaher, 43, said that when he was growing up in Kabul, "nobody knew what gay was and all gay people were suppressed. They could never accept themselves or talk to anyone about their feelings."

Like the other gay men who spoke to The Associated Press, he said that as a young man he felt that he wanted to be "normal," and concealed his sexuality, until it just became too difficult.

In 2008, Zaher left the country and settled in Toronto, Canada where he works in the construction industry. He describes the transition as from "zero percent freedom to 100 percent." He wrote a book that became his coming-out manifesto and said "accordingly, my family disowned me."

Since the Taliban's extremist regime was overthrown in the U.S. invasion of 2001, the flow of information into Afghanistan has helped boost awareness, but understanding and tolerance of homosexuality are still a long way off, even compared to regional neighbors. Russia is notoriously intolerant toward homosexuals, but the practice itself is legal. In China, homosexuality was legalized in 1997 and removed from the official list of mental illnesses in 2001.

Young gay men in Afghanistan still largely grow up with identity crises, waiting for perplexing feelings to subside and make way for "normality."

Rameen said that from the age of 4 he was "feeling very strange. I liked playing with girls, with girls' toys, I liked fashion, and people used to make jokes about me."

When he enrolled in university to study journalism, he thought these "strange feelings" he had toward men would leave him "because I didn't know what gay is," he said.

He caved in to pressure from classmates to find a girlfriend, but said "It was not realistic. Nothing changed."

After hearing a friend talking about homosexuality, Rameen went to an internet cafe and looked up what it means to be gay.

"I read so many stories, and I realized that it is something real with me. It will never change. It is natural."

That led him to a gay dating website, through which he met an expat working in Afghanistan.

"That opened up a new window on life for me.

"In a way, I am lucky," he said. "Think of the generations who came before me who had no idea what it even meant to be gay."

Two weeks ago, German intelligence agents noticed an unusual user in a chat room known as a digital hideout for Islamic militants. The man claimed to be one of them – and said he was a German spy. He was offering to help Islamists infiltrate his agency's defenses to stage a strike.

Agents lured him into a private chat, and he gave away so many details about the spy agency – and his own directives within it to thwart Islamists – that they quickly identified him, arresting the 51-year-old the next day

Officials ran a check on the online alias he assumed in radical chat rooms. The married father of four had used it before – as recently as 2011 – as his stage name for acting in gay pornographic films.

In custody, the man, officials say, admitted under interrogation that he was a secret convert to Islam and that he had the aim all along to infiltrate the domestic spy agency so he could warn "his religious brothers" about the agency's investigations.

Questions for discussion:

1) As many of you know, being homosexual is forbidden by sharia law. Do you think the traitor justified his behavior by considering himself an "undercover" agent?

2) Could more radical Muslim terrorists be apprehended by looking for guys named Mohammed in gay chat rooms?

3) How do we meet the vital need to have more Islamists in our spy agencies without recruiting traitors? Do you think recruits should have their photos compared to gay porn actors?

4) Should Muslim gay porn films be studied to see if they are secretly broadcasting messages to radical Islamists?

5) Do you think ILGBTQ activists ever get together to behead themselves?

6) Do gay, fundamentalist Islamists believe they are entitled to four husbands?

7) If this man wanted to attempt to marry another man and tried to get a cake celebrating the ceremony at a bakery in Mosul or Raqqah, what do you think would happen?